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Smash Ultimate, Minecraft, TWEWY, etc..

Hey there, the name's Bryan. In system Re:Body(In order of the rainbow): 

Sean, Esper, Blinky, Compact, Janey, Kyle, Gwen'd, Gwen, Emily, Rollin, Waynin, Trease, Layy, Justin, Chloe, Zachery, and Elliot. 

I've been here a while. Much longer than I thought I'd be. Our system was founded October 2nd, 2018. In early 2020, we decided that due to our systems exponential growth, we'd limit who would be active. Now, every month, we do a check to see who wishes to be in dormancy and who wishes to be active. Currently, for the month of April, 2023, we've got myself(Bryan), Janey(Co-host), Emily, Layy, Chloe, and Esper(sub-rep). After over 2 long years, we can finally switch :) 

 

Bryan is currently swapped in as host, Esper is sub-rep. 

 

"There used to be 7 wonders of the world, but now there's 8, as everyone wonders how much of a fool you are."

 

Ice909#0065 -- Always down for a chat 

 

https://discord.gg/89qN59SbRp Plural safe-space 

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  • 1 month later...
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well.. I have some tragic news

 

despite all our optimism, it seems pokemon Sword and Shield are actually awful, like we were willing to deal with cut pokemon and maybe the game being way too easy (we'd do some self-enforced challenges), but

 

hearing that the game is really short and has no real post-game content is a deal breaker for $60 or even $40, and we can't justify buying it anymore. And if we can't, I don't think anyone at all can, unless they're first-time fans who started with Let's Go/Pokemon Go

 

this is really sad

Hi, I'm one of Lumi's tulpas! I like rain and dancing and dancing in the rain and if there's frogs there too that's bonus points.

I think being happy and having fun makes life worth living, so spreading happiness is my number one goal!

Talk to us? https://community.tulpa.info/thread-ask-lumi-s-tulpas

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Currently my most played games are Dead by Daylight, Hollow Knight and Slime Rancher. I have a lot more games though, and I usually end up returning them all at some point.

Michen, host or "main" / Amantha, anthro arctic fox tulpa

 

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Currently playing the Outer Worlds, about 10 hours in. Game's pretty fun, I like the idea of having a ship and crew, something I really liked about Mass Effect. The game's aesthetics are awesome but a bit played out. Feels like retro-futurism is everywhere nowadays.

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Was going to post this in LOTPW but I guess there's enough reason to post it here-

 

Just realized while discussing with our friend who's big into game design, why so many big franchises' newest games have been worse than predecessors. Not just the most obvious examples like Sword&Shield/Sun&Moon, but Skyrim, Mario Party (and MANY other nintendo games), and honestly an endless list right down to more personal examples for us like Dungeon Defenders 2 or Bloons Tower Defense 6 (while 5 is in our opinion the all-time best game in the tower defense genre) - we've finally had it put to words why they're just not as good, and yet commercially doing about as well as they ever have or better.

 

Basically, companies get big by taking risks and standing out, but once they're big, the best way to stay in business and keep making money is to stop taking risks. Be as safe as possible, appeal to as many people over a wide range as possible. Reduce challenge, complexity and depth in favor of cheap appeal tactics. And most of all, appeal to the masses and as many "not-really-gamers" as possible - we half-jokingly call them casuals, lol. Diablo 4 can stand to lose thousands of long-time fans of the franchise if the hype it builds up attracts an even bigger audience, for example.

 

Well, I'll keep that whole discussion brief, but it's actually a pretty big deal to us and kind of upsetting to realize in full. It basically means we're going to have to learn to give up franchises we loved like Mario Party and Pokemon in lieu of probably indie games, though something like A Hat in Time or Stardew Valley only comes around so often.

 

Though hopefully the majority of games still remain enjoyable or the companies (mainly Nintendo..) decide to appeal to long-time fans again too. Pokemon is teetering on the edge of dying for us, but Super Mario Party was so awful compared to any of the older games that we refunded it after one (long) session of playing it with friends. And that's an honestly sad and worrying trend to us, even though it's just on the topic of video games.

Hi. I'm one of Luminesce's tulpas. Unlike the others, I don't think I stand out too much from him personality wise.

I'm just special because "I'm a tulpa". So I don't think I've much to offer, here. I'm happy enough to just be with him.

Ask us stuff - https://community.tulpa.info/thread-ask-lumi-s-tulpas

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Yeah, that makes sense. I actually once heard something similar about the success of big companies. "They succeed in 1 of 2 ways: by being popular or by actually being good at what they do." Sometimes a company that makes games can get away with riding the wave of popularity they've obtained from a past game that was great, without their current products living up to the same standard of quality. Not all of them do that of course, some are committed to excellence.

Yo, my name is Sean and I'm the host of 2 tulpas: Sente and Mae. You'll know when they're talking because Sente talks in yellow text and Mae talks in blue text.

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I kinda get that. I understand where you're coming from, don't get me wrong, but some changes are required for the best. The dex cut in sw/sh, for example, was required to maintain the state of competitive. I get it, game freak lied, but still. And for other games, not everyone can be a winner. Trying to appeal to the casual market is dumb, yeah. From a business standpoint, it makes sense. Appeal to more people/a larger crowd, sell more copies, make more money. Are they betraying their current fans? Maybe. A part of it also comes down to the player's skill. If you've been playing, say, pokemon since gen 3 and you say gen 7 or 8 is too easy, have you thought that it's perhaps because your knowledge on the game has expanded? That you know the game so well that it poses little challenge regardless of what version you're playing? That's a very real possibility. I sucked at Mario & Luigi partners in time when I was little. I couldn't get through the midpoint of it. But I continued playing the games in the series and when I came to dream team, some years later, I found it a breeze. Was the game itself much harder? Nope. I went back and played partners in time again and it was quite easy. Did the game itself get easier? Nope. I just learned the strategies I needed to do well. I wasn't just spamming jump and hammer and neglecting gear anymore. I had learned from playing, and that's likely what's happened with many games.

 

As far as DD2 goes... yeah, it sucked. I played the fuck outta the original and loved it. The second one was easily sub-par. Difficulty aside, it was just bad. And this can certainly happen to games. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but the alternative explanation is next to never touched upon. Bad games come for a variety of reasons. I have no clue where I'm going with this so Imma head out. Peace!

 

 

Let's hope Half-Life: Alyx is good. It looks great, and the fact that it's in VR gives me hope. (Unpopular opinion, I know)

Hey there, the name's Bryan. In system Re:Body(In order of the rainbow): 

Sean, Esper, Blinky, Compact, Janey, Kyle, Gwen'd, Gwen, Emily, Rollin, Waynin, Trease, Layy, Justin, Chloe, Zachery, and Elliot. 

I've been here a while. Much longer than I thought I'd be. Our system was founded October 2nd, 2018. In early 2020, we decided that due to our systems exponential growth, we'd limit who would be active. Now, every month, we do a check to see who wishes to be in dormancy and who wishes to be active. Currently, for the month of April, 2023, we've got myself(Bryan), Janey(Co-host), Emily, Layy, Chloe, and Esper(sub-rep). After over 2 long years, we can finally switch :) 

 

Bryan is currently swapped in as host, Esper is sub-rep. 

 

"There used to be 7 wonders of the world, but now there's 8, as everyone wonders how much of a fool you are."

 

Ice909#0065 -- Always down for a chat 

 

https://discord.gg/89qN59SbRp Plural safe-space 

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If you've been playing, say, pokemon since gen 3 and you say gen 7 or 8 is too easy, have you thought that it's perhaps because your knowledge on the game has expanded? That you know the game so well that it poses little challenge regardless of what version you're playing?

 

Your points are all valid in general, though not for the specific example of Sword & Shield or really us in general. Our opinions take all of this into account. For SwSh, for example:

 

Forced full heals between what feels like every other battle are very common especially early on, which is enough time to get your party over-leveled with no hassle (I haven't seen the later half of the game yet to tell if the full healing gets less excessive)

 

Permanent (this time around, not even disable-able) ""Exp. Share"" that multiplies your experience gained a ridiculous amount. You'd expect them to balance the game around this, but based on the three streamers I've seen get to ~lv 50s so far, they definitely end up much higher level overall, with no grinding.

 

Exp. Candies that are basically handed out to you en masse if you play the Raid content, which you can do solo right from the start of the game easily. You don't have to use them, but it's a little insulting they'd make the game so easy already just to then give out these options to make the game easier - completely foregoing the option to have the game be even a slight challenge. If the game was a little difficult by default, but then had things like XP candies and playing with your Pokemon in the Camp for XP for casual players, that'd be great. But it's not.

 

That's just the difficulty stuff, nothing about how casual the games feel now overall (you LITERALLY cannot walk five steps without a cutscene showing you where to go for the first ~3 hours of the game, and it stays hand-holdy throughout afaik) nor the poor decisions they've made overall. Though unlike your idea of why they cut Pokemon which is almost surely wrong, the most likely explanation seems to be that the games are developed on major time constraints. That's definitely more "higher up" problems than anything game design/choice wise, to be fair, but it's still causing the problems we see.

 

 

But yeah, it's really a case by case basis per-game. Bloons 6 for example is the first game in the series to be absolutely full of Pay-to-Win options, which as players who refuse to use anything but the base game (not even the sampling of free consumable towers/abilities you get from dailies/challenges) may be why the game feels crappy to us.

 

I could write more about what's wrong with Super Mario Party than I could about Sword & Shield, so I won't get into that one. Point is, despite it being case-by-case, it's still very much a visible trend and it's kind of upsetting. If you want a more professional-sounding source on this exact thing, you could watch this entire too-long-but-very-quality video, or you could go straight to

[video=youtube]

Hi. I'm one of Luminesce's tulpas. Unlike the others, I don't think I stand out too much from him personality wise.

I'm just special because "I'm a tulpa". So I don't think I've much to offer, here. I'm happy enough to just be with him.

Ask us stuff - https://community.tulpa.info/thread-ask-lumi-s-tulpas

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  • 1 month later...

For anyone who isn't in the know about Pokemon Sword/Shield, if you wanted to be (even if you've played it maybe), I found this amazingly well done video that puts most criticisms I had to better words, with examples. Highly recommended, especially considering the video length (40 minutes) is 1/25 the time Sword/Shield itself takes to beat, despite the $60 price tag.

(coincidentally, only his first point about classic sounds I disagree with - everything from there on I couldn't have said better myself)


I have even more to say, like how the system for catching (or rather, not catching) Pokemon above your current level is terrible (there seems to be a second, invisible nerf to capture rate for pokemon stronger than you even IF your badges allow you to catch pokemon that high of level...), but honestly after watching this only people with a lot of money to spare would consider buying the games I think.

 

On a totally unrelated related note, I played through Pokemon Ultra Moon and it was actually amazing, my first impression in the past was that it was too easy and similar to Moon, but having played through it now (with XP share OFF), it was actually very challenging overall despite the frequent (far more relevant than SwSh's) cutscenes, and the post-game content in the Ultra versions of the game is crazy, compared to the zero in SwSh. Highly highly recommended, Pokemon Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon for 3DS.

Edited by Luminesce

Hi! I'm Lumi, host of Reisen, Tewi, Flandre and Lucilyn.

Everyone deserves to love and be loved. It's human nature.

My tulpas and I have a Q&A thread, which was the first (and largest) of its kind. Feel free to ask us about tulpamancy stuff there.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Here's a really inspiring (really), uh.. documentary? It's just a Youtube video, but I guess EmperorLemon is one of the few people to make long-form content like this. Knowledge of Smash Bros. Melee is not required at all to enjoy the video, and actually lots of people are saying they didn't know about the competitive Melee scene until this video and loved it by the end in the comments. But I dunno, you might just have to take my word for it that it's inspiring and worth the watch. You might feel lost towards the start if you really don't know the game, but I'm sure by the end (well, long before that lol) you'll have learned all you needed to fully enjoy it. He does a great job of explaining everything since he knows most of his audience isn't Smash fans (hence why the video is so long tbh)

 

But seriously this is an 84 minute video so you'll need to commit, lol. If it means anything, I liked it so much (as a Melee and Hbox fan) that I watched it a second time only an hour later, because it was so dang well made

But there's unmistakable value for non-melee fans, it's just a very human story I think nearly anyone could appreciate

Edited by Luminesce

Hi! I'm Lumi, host of Reisen, Tewi, Flandre and Lucilyn.

Everyone deserves to love and be loved. It's human nature.

My tulpas and I have a Q&A thread, which was the first (and largest) of its kind. Feel free to ask us about tulpamancy stuff there.

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